Each of us has the opportunity to make
choices. We choose to leave the house,
transportation, destination, what we eat and so forth. Often we are presented with obstacles as a result
of our choices. For example, we may have
a variety of ways to get from point A to point B - do we want to take the
scenic route or something faster. If we
had stayed in one lane could we have avoided the car crash that happens in the
next? What about those that we
encounter. How do our choices effect them? And what about those things we can't control
like the weather or health? Often the result of our choices makes no difference. Other times even the smallest decision may change our entire lives.
I think "The Mountain Between
Us" gives us some great illustrations of what our choices may cost.
 |
By Source (WP:NFCC#4), Fair use, https://en.
wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54196569
|
The
movie opens with Alex, a journalist, at an airport in Idaho anxious to get to
her fiancé in Colorado as her wedding day is near. Ben, a neurosurgeon, is anxious to return to
Baltimore as there is a ten-year-old boy in need of his service.
All flights have been cancelled due to
the weather. Alex believes that she can
overcome this obstacle by hiring a private charter flight. She gambles on a pilot she's never met. And while the weather is not a challenge for
him personally, there is another factor that neither had even thought to
consider.
Alex, not knowing anything about Ben in
addition to not knowing the pilot, asks Ben if he would like to join her on the
charter plane to Colorado. I would think
if Ben is unable to get a flight to Baltimore from Idaho due to the weather, it
would be likely that Colorado's weather would be similar - but whatever. No one thinks about that.
During the course of the movie, Ben
and Alex are faced with more obstacles as they climb the snow covered hills of
the Unitah Mountains in search of salvation, I thought about what the choice
made had cost them - or changed them - because without the experience that only
they shared - they would not have evolved from who they were prior to the movie
starting to who they became afterward.
I think the story itself was
fictionalized, but I really enjoyed watching the movie and discovering another
demonstration of just how much impact our choices may have not just on our
lives but those around us. I'm grateful
that the unwise choice Jenna and I had made recently about crossing a fenced
path didn't have such a dramatic result.
Funny thing is if we had started the other direction, I wouldn't have
crossed it.
So often when I go to Millsite, it's like I'm seeing it for the first time.
